What skills for what kind of Europe? EU skills policy between competitivenenss and cohesion

In a world, where skills increasingly matter, enhancing our understanding of the role of skills policy in reaching core and notable competing European integration objectives such as competitiveness and cohesion is imperative. The European Parliament and Member States agreed to launch the "European Year of Skills" in May 2023. The unprecedented attention at EU-level towards the issue of skills shortage and to the fostering of citizens’ skills for a resilient and green economy makes it all the more necessary to assess the rationales and instruments of EU skills policy. Over the course of European integration, the role of individuals and their skills has not only gained importance for joint policies, but skills have also served different purposes. After a social policy-based approach to people’s skills throughout the past century, knowledge has been coined a condition for economic competitiveness in the EU’s Lisbon Strategy. Since then, skills policy has become a distinguishable area of Union action. More recently, skills have not only been connected to the Single Market and its sustained resilience after COVID-19, but also to the digital and green transitions, where social considerations re-surface. The paper asks: How do skills and EU skills policy relate to the fulfilment of European integration objectives? The analysis shows how skills and skills policy (ought to) contribute to the realization of core aims of the European project, notably competitiveness, cohesion and resilience. For that purpose, first, the relationship between the European project and people’s skills is unravelled through narrative analysis of (archival) documents. From here, the paper analyses the emergence of selected skills policy instruments through interviews conducted with EU skills policy stakeholders. The paper reveals contrasting understandings of skills in EU policymaking, which have resulted in unresolved tensions or reconciliation attempts.